Lights and lighting provide useful general illumination of interior and exterior spaces in homes and buildings, as well as provide ornamental and artistic treatments for decorative purposes. These purposes include lighting functions as well as highlights for artwork, for accent and interior ornamental design functions, and other functions. Often furniture or cabinetry have lights for illuminating articles held within the furniture or cabinets. For cabinets, and in particular kitchen wall cabinets, lighting fixtures are often mounted to a lower exterior surface or are recessed relative to the surface, for providing lighting to countertop surfaces below the cabinets. In a “recess” application, a cavity within a shelf or lower wall of the cabinet receives the light fixture. The lighting fixture thereby has a reduced profile outwardly of the mounting surface.
Under-cabinet puck lights are one type of lighting fixture useful for these lighting applications. Puck-type lights have generally cylindrical disc-shaped housings. The housings contain a reflector, a lamp socket with a light emitive bulb, and a cover lens for transmitting light from the housing to the countertop surface below the cabinet. The lamp socket connects to a supply of electrical current. The lights provide pools of lights to the countertop surface, and are used typically in kitchens and display cabinetry for providing light on the working surfaces in kitchens as well as for use in highlighting articles in display cabinets.
Under-cabinet puck lights that are commercially available operate with 12 volt direct current, or more recently, as disclosed in my U.S. Pat. No. 6,491,413, operate on 120 volt (line) alternating current. Generally, the puck-type lighting fixtures are provided commercially as after-market installation devices. While the low-voltage puck-type under-cabinet lighting fixtures have been satisfactory in after-market installations, permanent mounting of puck lights and high voltage puck lights require the use of appropriate junction boxes for electrical connections of the wiring, for conduit through which the electrical wires pass between the source of the current and the light, and for satisfactory access to control switches for activating the lights for use.
My U.S. Pat. No. 6,431,722 discloses an under-cabinet lighting fixture suited particularly for permanent surface and recessed mounting to a cabinet. The lighting fixture includes a housing adapted to receive a light bulb for mounting to a cabinet surface and a junction box adapted for receiving electrical wires for connecting the light bulb in the housing to a supply of electrical current. A stem disposed within a hole in the wall of the cabinet surface to which the housing mounts, connects the housing and the junction box. The stem includes a plate intermediate the distal ends, which plate stops against the junction box and the stem further defines a passageway for the electrical wires from the junction box to the light bulb in the housing.
Under-cabinet lighting fixtures of this type readily install in permanent surface and recessed mounting configurations. Stems of a standard size are provided, such as to cabinet manufacturers for installation or permanently mounted lighting fixtures during assembly of the cabinets. However, cabinets are made by different manufacturers or are even custom-made, and wall thickness of the boards used to made the cabinets vary among manufacturers. After-market installation of the under-cabinet lighting fixture may require the use of spacers to accommodate walls of thinner thickness, while walls of greater thickness may require a special or longer stem.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved undercabinet lighting fixture to readily accommodate installation to walls having a range of thickness. It is to such that the present invention is directed.